“A Slumber did my Spirit Seal” is a poem by Williams Wordsworth about death and aging. The speaker talks of his love who passed away peacefully from old age, a cause he did not consider until he lost her. He uses a bountiful amount of alliteration to give the poem a whimsical tone. However, the twist in the middle causes this whimsical tone to turn dark and depressing as he grieves for the loss of his beloved.
The poem begins by opening with the title, emphasizing that he was in a trance-like state. The first stanza describes how the speaker had shunned his eyes and mind from the thought that his love was again. “A slumber did my spirit seal;/I had no human fears:[.]” (Wordsworth 1–2) By describing his spirit as being sealed in a slumbering state, he illustrates that he was or chose to be unaware of the truth right in front of him. This fact is clarified as he states that he had no human fears, suggesting that he had cast away or could not comprehend those fears in favor of his blind love. The next two lines have the speaker shift his focus on what he thought was true about his love: “She seemed a thing that could not feel/The touch of earthly years.” (Wordsworth 3–4) In his mind, his love could never age and feel the symptoms of aging.
The second stanza proceeds to describe her death and the experiences that she had lost from it: “No motion has she now, no force;” (Wordsworth 5) This line displays what the speaker sees of her dead body: still, sound, and silent. She is in a trance where she can never wake, just like his spirit was before she died. The speaker then states how “She neither hears nor sees;” (Wordsworth 6) Her senses are not functioning as she is no longer alive. “Rolled round in earth’s diurnal course,/With rocks, and stones, and trees.” (Wordsworth 7–8) The speaker’s beloved has been laid to rest within nature, covered in the scent of earth and moving along with time.
The poet follows an ABAB CDCD rhyme scheme. Though short, it hammers the overall themes and feelings as the reader is given peace by her being laid to rest.